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Well I finished season 5 last night, great, great ending.

Now I'm rewatching the pilot.

Overall, great show. Some flaws, B5's future is one of those ones where everyone is American or Japanese, no Chinese, hardly any Indians. It still bugs me but oh well.

Season 5 definitely felt padded, it might have worked better if it had skipped ahead rather than follow the 1 year per season rule. I would love to see what happened to Lyta, the telepath war, the 2nd (or 3rd) Centari war... I know books took care of some of them. Are the books any good?

Strange to think the show ended 12 years ago, debuted 16 years back. There are dakkites younger than B5. the CGI of course looks dated, not unacceptable but dated. The direction also is a bit static after shows like BSG.

But plot-wise it can't be touched.

Acting is tons better than any contemporary SF show and many of the ones since. Much better the ST:TNG for example. G'Kar and Londo get special credit for doing such a great job under a crapton of makeup and prostetics.

I just wish I had never seen 'In the Beginning' since that spoils almost the whole show.

I wonder if we'll see Babylon 5 Reimagined in a few years?

Season 5 to me was a let down. It wasn't horrible but just felt tacked on after they shot their load with the shadow war and the battle for earth. If you want truely horrible... watch Crusade.

I was actually thinking of renting crusade, is worth getting from netflix?

Has anyone read the books, I hear that's where we find the final fate of Bester and Centari Prime. Any good?

Some good, some bad, same as all tie-ins, really.

"To dream in the city of sorrows" is generally reported as one of the better ones, though (al backstory on Sinclair as ambassador to Minbar)

1. Crusade was meh at best. It felt like a B5 version of Star Trek.

2. B5 books? who are they written by?

I liked everything about Crusade, except the musical scoring. It was just butt ugly stupid.

I'm up to season 4 of Stargate (but stopped a few weeks ago due to a lack of time) and want to continue right through.

I watched the first 6 series a few years ago over 4 weeks whilst painting one of my armies.

The only problem I have with SG was them always trying to hoist american liberal view/morals onto every new group they met, yet bould blow the hell out of anyone who tried to do the same to them.

B5 was good, but I got bored with long runs of nothing happening. That may have been because of my age aat the time, and I wonder if I would understand more of it now.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Season 5 definitely felt padded, it might have worked better if it had skipped ahead rather than follow the 1 year per season rule. I would love to see what happened to Lyta, the telepath war, the 2nd (or 3rd) Centari war... I know books took care of some of them. Are the books any good?

The fifth season was padded.
While they were making the fourth season they didn't know at the time if they were going to get a fifth. The Shadow War was supposed to be the focus of the fourth season and taking back Earth from President Clark was for the fifth. Even the finale of season five was filmed during the fourth season in case the series didn't get one more season.

I don't mind the fifth season, but I've always felt short changed Shadow War.

My big beef with the last season is that its missing Claudia Christian who at the time I was very much infatuated with.

Frazzled wrote:
2. B5 books? who are they written by?

No one particular writer. The Del Rey ones were all fleshed out JMS storylines iirc. Peter David did do a few, SM Stirling did at least one.